GMO mosquitoes are a risky technology created to solve a problem that is negligible in the United States. Oxitec claims that by reducing the mosquito population, mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever and malaria, will be reduced. But in the U.S., this is irrelevant. Dengue fever has affected 110 people in Florida in 2020. But only 70 were locally-transmitted cases. The last small outbreak in Florida occurred in 2013.  In California, there have been ZERO cases of locally acquired dengue. As a matter of fact, there have only been 332 dengue cases in the entire U.S. in 2020, of which only 80 were locally transmitted cases, according to the CDC. The rest were travel-associated, contracted outside of the U.S. The CDC says, “Yellow fever is a very rare cause of illness in U.S. travelers.” Yellow fever can be transmitted by Aedes aegypti to travelers in Africa and South America. And what about malaria? Malaria isn’t even transmitted by Aedes aegypti, it’s transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes. So malaria is irrelevant.

Oxitec refuses to provide data and has not proven that their GMO mosquitoes reduce disease transmission. Oxitec has even admitted that the Florida Keys experiments will only track mosquito populations before and after GMO mosquito releases, not disease suppression or transmissions.

Oxitec’s mosquitoes are raised in tetracycline and may spread antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as staph and MRSA.

People in the trial areas have not provided their consent to being experimented on with GMO mosquitoes.

There has been no Environmental Impact Statement and no endangered species assessment. There are approximately 200 endangered species in California.

Potential human health impacts have not been researched by any third party.

Oxitec claims biting females will not be released. A peer-reviewed study proved them wrong.

Oxitec’s GMO mosquito technology will not reduce pesticide spraying.

The long-term impacts to human health and the environment are unknown. Despite Oxitec’s claims to the contrary, GMO mosquito genes were found to have spread to the wild population 3 years after a similar experiment in Brazil.